The present disclosure relates to performing singulation of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags using stored state information.
Shipping packages typically involves moving the packages to different locations in a shipping warehouse in preparation for the packages being loaded onto trucks or other transport vehicles for external distribution. Shipping warehouses can use RFID systems to track inventory. RFID tags, which can be passive or active, may be included with or disposed on the inventory (e.g., individual packages or pallets) in the warehouse and are typically programmed with information identifying the associated inventory item(s). The identifying information may be read from the RFID tags by RFID readers disposed throughout the shipping warehouse. In one example, RFID readers may be located at loading docks or along conveyor systems so that the RFID system can detect when RFID tags (and the corresponding inventory) pass through.
The performance of a particular RFID reader when communicating with RFID tags may depend on multiple factors. In some cases, RFID reader performance may be expressed as a number of tag reads per second. Within “dense” RFID environments having large populations of RFID tags, a RFID reader may experience a substantial decrease in performance, in some cases as drastic as a third-order exponential decay in tag reads per second for increasing numbers of RFID tags. One reason for the performance decrease can be attributed to the number of reads of already-identified RFID tags during inventorying operations.